Rods "Spaceship" Scratch built Plasma Cutter build

rodw wrote: Clearly, there was a fault tin the plasma cutter so I went home in disgust only to realise half way home that I had not bothered to connect the work clamp!

It is amazing how a drive (or ride) can get the brain back in focus...

phillc54 wrote:

rodw wrote: Clearly, there was a fault tin the plasma cutter so I went home in disgust only to realise half way home that I had not bothered to connect the work clamp!

It is amazing how a drive (or ride) can get the brain back in focus...

The silly thing, I wasn't even thinking about it at the time!

rodw wrote: This weekend, I replaced the two Y axis motors

Attachment not found

The new motors are the smaller ones with the pulleys on them. With shipping these cost about 4x what the other cheap ones are and are 7 amp vs the larges 4.2 amp motors. ANyway a bit of wight saving to offset the proposed braces.


The Z axis motor is still to be replaced!

Rod you need bigger motors.

Nah, Clive the Spaceship will get into orbit quite nicely with what it has...

rodw wrote:

phillc54 wrote:

rodw wrote: Clearly, there was a fault tin the plasma cutter so I went home in disgust only to realise half way home that I had not bothered to connect the work clamp!

It is amazing how a drive (or ride) can get the brain back in focus...

The silly thing, I wasn't even thinking about it at the time!

Pssst....i did the same thing a while back, wondering if there is enough air from the crappy compressor. It was the next day that i realised the error of my ways. Not a nice feeling, at all.
Now, do not tell that to anyone !

I got caught again today with ArcOK! This time the circuit breaker had tripped on the air compressor part way through a job. I was sitting htere scratching my head until I saw all the low air pressure warning lights flashing on the plasma cutter.

I also made some revisions to my Ohmic component as it was not behaving for me. A loose wire on the power supply DC output did not help!

Followers of thins build might remember on the first few pages of this thread, I shared a render that included a material rest for full sheets. I am pleased to say I have finally built it!



Its made from 32NB water pipe (1 1/4" for the laggards) with some 25NB (1") water pipe telescoped inside and clamped off with a M8 bolt for some height adjustment. I was going to add some casters to the legs but I don't think its necessary. The sliding rails are pretty long so they act as a counterbalance and lift the legs off the ground when slid right in. You pick it up and lift the legs to move it back and then they drop down. Works quite nice really.

Not adjustable ??? :pinch:

tommylight wrote: Not adjustable ??? :pinch:

Yeh, it slides out about 1500mm and the legs are also adjustable. But the height isn't because its fixed by the table height. Took me a while to work out how it needed to work.

Nice, that should be more that enough.

Yes, mostly I cut full sheets (2400 x 1200) and previously propped it up on a piece of SHS which would fall down. I bought the tube when I last bought some steel but I needed to buy a notcher (Cheap Chinese drill press one) which I did last weekend. I won't say its my favourite tool but it got the job done after I worked out how to mount it up becasue it did not really work well on my bench drill press.

Today was much easier.